Frialator research methods

AdAge notes that market research consistently finds that consumers say they want more healthy option, yet mysteriously people buy fried chicken, not grilled chicken. In other news, voters want more government services but lower taxes and Augustine prayed for chastity, but not yet.

The only real question to me is whether opinion/marketing survey and focus group respondents have clear self-awareness of their preferences but obsfucate them for reasons of social desirability bias? The alternative is that people do not really understand their own latent preferences (which are only made manifest in interaction) and when asked to articulate their preferences they fall back onto cultural scripts. My own vote goes for the “we don’t understand our own preferences” model as I think of myself as being an idiot far more often than a liar and I generalize from that n of 1.